{"id":493,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:21","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=493"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:28:21","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:21","slug":"11-book-2-canto-05-the-godheads-of-the-little-life-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/28-savitri-volume-28\/11-book-2-canto-05-the-godheads-of-the-little-life-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","title":{"rendered":"-11_Book 2 Canto 05 The Godheads of the Little Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n
\n

Canto Five<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Godheads of
\nthe Little Life<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A fixed and narrow power with rigid forms,<\/p>\n

He saw the empire of the little life,<\/p>\n

An unhappy corner in eternity.<\/p>\n

It lived upon the margin of the Idea<\/p>\n

Protected by Ignorance as in a shell.<\/p>\n

Then, hoping to learn the secret of this world<\/p>\n

He peered across its scanty fringe of sight,<\/p>\n

To disengage from its surface-clear obscurity<\/p>\n

The Force that moved
\nit and the Idea that made<\/p>\n

Imposing smallness on the Infinite,<\/p>\n

The ruling spirit of its littleness,<\/p>\n

The divine law that gave it right to be,<\/p>\n

Its claim on Nature and its need in Time.<\/p>\n

He plunged his gaze into the siege of mist<\/p>\n

That held this ill-lit straitened continent<\/p>\n

Ringed with the skies and seas of ignorance<\/p>\n

And kept it safe from Truth and Self and Light.<\/p>\n

As when a searchlight stabs the Night’s blind breast<\/p>\n

And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear<\/p>\n

As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness,<\/p>\n

All lurking things were torn out of their veils<\/p>\n

And held up in his vision’s sun-white blaze.<\/p>\n

A busy restless uncouth populace<\/p>\n

Teemed in their dusky unnoted thousands there.<\/p>\n

In a mist of secrecy wrapping the world-scene<\/p>\n

The little deities of Time’s nether act<\/p>\n

Who work remote from Heaven’s controlling eye,<\/p>\n

Plotted, unknown to the creatures whom they move,<\/p>\n

The small conspiracies of this petty reign<\/p>\n

Amused with the small contrivings, the brief hopes<\/p>\n

And little eager steps and little ways <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 151<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

And reptile wallowings in the dark and dust,<\/p>\n

And the crouch and ignominy of creeping life.<\/p>\n

A trepidant and motley multitude,<\/p>\n

A strange pell-mell
\nof magic artisans<\/p>\n

Was seen moulding the plastic clay of life,<\/p>\n

An elfin brood, an elemental kind.<\/p>\n

Astonished by the unaccustomed glow,<\/p>\n

As if immanent in the shadows started up<\/p>\n

Imps with wry limbs and carved beast visages,<\/p>\n

Sprite prompters goblin-wizened or faery-small,<\/p>\n

And genii fairer but unsouled and poor<\/p>\n

And fallen beings, their heavenly portion lost,<\/p>\n

And errant divinities trapped in Time’s dust.<\/p>\n

Ignorant and dangerous wills but armed with power,<\/p>\n

Half-animal, half-god their mood, their shape.<\/p>\n

Out of the greyness of a dim background<\/p>\n

Their whispers come, an inarticulate force,<\/p>\n

Awake in mind an echoing thought or word,<\/p>\n

To their sting of impulse the heart’s sanction draw,<\/p>\n

And in that little Nature do their work<\/p>\n

And fill its powers and creatures with unease.<\/p>\n

Its seed of joy they curse with sorrow’s fruit,<\/p>\n

Put out with error’s breath its scanty lights<\/p>\n

And turn its surface truths to falsehood’s ends,<\/p>\n

Its small emotions spur, its passions drive<\/p>\n

To the abyss or through the bog and mire:<\/p>\n

Or else with a goad of hard dry lusts they prick,<\/p>\n

While jogs on devious ways that nowhere lead<\/p>\n

Life’s cart finding no issue from ignorance.<\/p>\n

To sport with good and evil is their law;<\/p>\n

Luring to failure and meaningless success,<\/p>\n

All models they corrupt, all measures cheat,<\/p>\n

Make knowledge a poison, virtue a pattern dull<\/p>\n

And lead the endless cycles of desire<\/p>\n

Through semblances of sad or happy chance<\/p>\n

To an inescapable fatality. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 152<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

All by their influence is enacted there.<\/p>\n

Nor there alone is their empire or their role:<\/p>\n

Wherever are soulless minds and guideless lives<\/p>\n

And in a small body self is all that counts,<\/p>\n

Wherever love and light and largeness lack,<\/p>\n

These crooked fashioners take up their task.<\/p>\n

To all half-conscious worlds they extend their reign.<\/p>\n

Here too these godlings drive our human hearts,<\/p>\n

Our nature’s twilight is their lurking place.<\/p>\n

Here too the darkened primitive heart obeys<\/p>\n

The veiled suggestions of a hidden Mind<\/p>\n

That dogs our knowledge with misleading light<\/p>\n

And stands between us and the
\ntruth that saves.<\/p>\n

It speaks to us with the voices of the Night:<\/p>\n

Our darkened lives to greater darkness move;<\/p>\n

Our seekings listen to calamitous hopes.<\/p>\n

A structure of unseeing thoughts is built<\/p>\n

And reason used by an irrational Force.<\/p>\n

This earth alone is not our teacher and nurse;<\/p>\n

The powers of all the worlds have entrance here.<\/p>\n

In their own fields they follow the wheel of law<\/p>\n

And cherish the safety of a settled type;<\/p>\n

On earth out of their changeless orbit thrown<\/p>\n

Their law is kept, lost their fixed form of things.<\/p>\n

Into a creative chaos they are cast<\/p>\n

Where all asks order but is driven by Chance;<\/p>\n

Strangers to earth-nature, they must learn earth’s ways,<\/p>\n

Aliens or opposites, they must unite:<\/p>\n

They work and battle and with pain agree:<\/p>\n

These join, those part, all parts and joins anew,<\/p>\n

Till all have found their divine harmony.<\/p>\n

Our life’s uncertain way winds circling on,<\/p>\n

Our mind’s unquiet search asks always light,<\/p>\n

Till they have learnt their secret in their source,<\/p>\n

In the light of the Timeless and its spaceless home,<\/p>\n

In the joy of the Eternal sole and one. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 153<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

But now the Light supreme is far away:<\/p>\n

Our conscious life obeys the
\ninconscience’ laws;<\/p>\n

To ignorant purposes and blind desires<\/p>\n

Our hearts are moved by an ambiguous force;<\/p>\n

Even our mind’s conquests wear a battered crown.<\/p>\n

A slowly changing order binds our will.<\/p>\n

This is our doom until our souls are free.<\/p>\n

A mighty Hand then rolls mind’s firmaments back,<\/p>\n

Infinity takes up the finite’s acts<\/p>\n

And Nature steps into the eternal Light.<\/p>\n

Then only ends this dream of nether life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the outset of this enigmatic world<\/p>\n

Which seems at once an enormous brute machine<\/p>\n

And a slow unmasking of the
\nSpirit in things,<\/p>\n

In this revolving chamber without walls<\/p>\n

In which God sits impassive everywhere<\/p>\n

As if unknown to himself and by us unseen<\/p>\n

In a miracle of inconscient secrecy,<\/p>\n

Yet is all here his action and his will.<\/p>\n

In this whirl and sprawl through infinite vacancy<\/p>\n

The Spirit became Matter and lay in the whirl,<\/p>\n

A body sleeping without sense or soul.<\/p>\n

A mass phenomenon of visible shapes<\/p>\n

Supported by the silence of the Void<\/p>\n

Appeared in the eternal Consciousness<\/p>\n

And seemed an outward and insensible world.<\/p>\n

There was none there to see and none to feel;<\/p>\n

Only the miraculous Inconscient,<\/p>\n

A subtle wizard skilled, was at its task.<\/p>\n

Inventing ways for magical results,<\/p>\n

Managing creation’s marvellous device,<\/p>\n

Marking mechanically dumb wisdom’s points,<\/p>\n

Using the unthought inevitable Idea,<\/p>\n

It did the works of God’s intelligence<\/p>\n

Or wrought the will of some supreme Unknown. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 154<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Still consciousness was hidden in Nature’s womb,<\/p>\n

Unfelt was the Bliss whose rapture dreamed the worlds.<\/p>\n

Being was an inert substance driven by Force.<\/p>\n

At first was only an etheric Space:<\/p>\n

Its huge vibrations circled round and round<\/p>\n

Housing some unconceived initiative:<\/p>\n

Upheld by a supreme original Breath<\/p>\n

Expansion and contraction’s mystic act<\/p>\n

Created touch and friction in the void,<\/p>\n

Into abstract emptiness brought clash and clasp:<\/p>\n

Parent of an expanding universe<\/p>\n

In a matrix of disintegrating force,<\/p>\n

By spending it conserved an endless sum.<\/p>\n

On the hearth of Space it kindled a viewless Fire<\/p>\n

That, scattering worlds as one might scatter seeds,<\/p>\n

Whirled out the luminous order of the stars.<\/p>\n

An ocean of electric Energy<\/p>\n

Formlessly formed its strange wave-particles<\/p>\n

Constructing by their dance this solid scheme,<\/p>\n

Its mightiness in the atom shut to rest;<\/p>\n

Masses were forged or feigned and visible shapes;<\/p>\n

Light flung the photon’s swift revealing spark<\/p>\n

And showed, in the minuteness of its flash<\/p>\n

Imaged, this cosmos of apparent things.<\/p>\n

Thus has been made this real impossible world,<\/p>\n

An obvious miracle or convincing show.<\/p>\n

Or so it seems to man’s audacious mind<\/p>\n

Who seats his thought as the arbiter of truth,<\/p>\n

His personal vision as impersonal fact,<\/p>\n

As witnesses of an objective world<\/p>\n

His erring sense and his instruments’ artifice.<\/p>\n

Thus must he work life’s tangible riddle out<\/p>\n

In a doubtful light, by error seize on Truth<\/p>\n

And slowly part the visage and the veil.<\/p>\n

Or else, forlorn of faith in mind and sense,<\/p>\n

His knowledge a bright body of ignorance, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 155<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

He sees in all things strangely fashioned here<\/p>\n

The unwelcome jest of a deceiving Force,<\/p>\n

A parable of Maya and her might.<\/p>\n

This vast perpetual motion caught and held<\/p>\n

In the mysterious and unchanging change<\/p>\n

Of the persistent movement we call Time<\/p>\n

And ever renewing its recurrent beat,<\/p>\n

These mobile rounds that stereotype a flux,<\/p>\n

These static objects in the cosmic dance<\/p>\n

That are but Energy’s self-repeating whirls<\/p>\n

Prolonged by the spirit of the brooding Void,<\/p>\n

Awaited life and sense and waking Mind.<\/p>\n

A little the Dreamer changed his pose of stone.<\/p>\n

But when the Inconscient’s scrupulous work was done<\/p>\n

And Chance coerced by fixed immutable laws,<\/p>\n

A scene was set for Nature’s conscious play.<\/p>\n

Then stirred the Spirit’s mute immobile sleep;<\/p>\n

The Force concealed broke dumbly, slowly out.<\/p>\n

A dream of living woke in Matter’s heart,<\/p>\n

A will to live moved
\nin the Inconscient’s dust,<\/p>\n

A freak of living startled vacant Time,<\/p>\n

Ephemeral in a blank eternity,<\/p>\n

Infinitesimal in a dead Infinite.<\/p>\n

A subtler breath quickened dead Matter’s forms;<\/p>\n

The world’s set rhythm changed to a conscious cry;<\/p>\n

A serpent Power twinned the insensible Force.<\/p>\n

Islands of living dotted lifeless
\nspace<\/p>\n

And germs of living formed in formless air.<\/p>\n

A life was born that followed Matter’s law,<\/p>\n

Ignorant of the motives of its steps;<\/p>\n

Ever inconstant, yet for ever the same,<\/p>\n

It repeated the paradox that gave it birth:<\/p>\n

Its restless and unstable stabilities<\/p>\n

Recurred incessantly in the flow of Time<\/p>\n

And purposeful movements in unthinking forms<\/p>\n

Betrayed the heavings of an imprisoned Will. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 156<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Waking and sleep lay locked in mutual arms;<\/p>\n

Helpless and indistinct came pleasure and pain<\/p>\n

Trembling with the first faint thrills of a World-Soul.<\/p>\n

A strength of life that could not cry or move,<\/p>\n

Yet broke into beauty signing some deep delight:<\/p>\n

An inarticulate sensibility,<\/p>\n

Throbs of the heart of an unknowing world,<\/p>\n

Ran through its somnolent torpor and there stirred<\/p>\n

A vague uncertain thrill, a wandering beat,<\/p>\n

A dim unclosing as of secret eyes.<\/p>\n

Infant self-feeling grew and birth was born.<\/p>\n

A godhead woke but lay with dreaming limbs;<\/p>\n

Her house refused to open its sealed doors.<\/p>\n

Insentient to our eyes that only see<\/p>\n

The form, the act and not the imprisoned God,<\/p>\n

Life hid in her pulse occult of growth and power<\/p>\n

A consciousness with mute stifled beats of sense,<\/p>\n

A mind suppressed that knew not yet of thought,<\/p>\n

An inert spirit that could only be.<\/p>\n

At first she raised no voice, no motion dared:<\/p>\n

Charged with world-power, instinct with living force,<\/p>\n

Only she clung with her roots to the safe earth,<\/p>\n

Thrilled dumbly to the shocks of ray and breeze<\/p>\n

And put out tendril fingers of desire;<\/p>\n

The strength in her yearning for sun and light<\/p>\n

Felt not the embrace that made her breathe and live;<\/p>\n

Absorbed she dreamed content with beauty and hue.<\/p>\n

At last the charmed Immensity looked forth:<\/p>\n

Astir, vibrant, hungering, she groped for mind;<\/p>\n

Then slowly sense quivered and thought peered out;<\/p>\n

She forced the reluctant mould to grow aware.<\/p>\n

The magic was chiselled of a conscious form;<\/p>\n

Its tranced vibrations rhythmed a quick response,<\/p>\n

And luminous stirrings prompted brain and nerve,<\/p>\n

Awoke in Matter spirit’s identity<\/p>\n

And in a body lit the miracle <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 157<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Of the heart’s love and the soul’s witness-gaze.<\/p>\n

Impelled by an unseen Will there could break out<\/p>\n

Fragments of some vast impulse to become<\/p>\n

And vivid glimpses of a secret self,<\/p>\n

And the doubtful seeds and force of shapes to be<\/p>\n

Awoke from the inconscient swoon of things.<\/p>\n

An animal creation crept and ran<\/p>\n

And flew and called between the earth and sky,<\/p>\n

Hunted by death but hoping still to live<\/p>\n

And glad to breathe if only for a while.<\/p>\n

Then man was moulded from the original brute.<\/p>\n

A thinking mind had come to lift life’s moods,<\/p>\n

A keen-edged tool of a Nature mixed and vague,<\/p>\n

An intelligence half-witness, half-machine.<\/p>\n

This seeming driver of her wheel of works<\/p>\n

Missioned to motive and record her drift<\/p>\n

And fix its law on her inconstant powers,<\/p>\n

This master-spring of a delicate enginery,<\/p>\n

Aspired to enlighten its user and refine<\/p>\n

Lifting to a vision of the indwelling Power<\/p>\n

The absorbed mechanic’s crude initiative:<\/p>\n

He raised his eyes; Heaven-light mirrored a Face.<\/p>\n

Amazed at the works wrought in her mystic sleep,<\/p>\n

She looked upon the world that she had made:<\/p>\n

Wondering now seized the great automaton;<\/p>\n

She paused to understand her self and aim,<\/p>\n

Pondering she learned to act by conscious rule,<\/p>\n

A visioned measure guided her rhythmic steps;<\/p>\n

Thought bordered her instincts with a frame of will<\/p>\n

And lit with the idea her blinded urge.<\/p>\n

On her mass of impulses, her reflex acts,<\/p>\n

On the Inconscient’s pushed or guided drift<\/p>\n

And mystery of unthinking accurate steps<\/p>\n

She stuck the specious image of a
\nSelf,<\/p>\n

A living idol of disfigured spirit;<\/p>\n

On Matter’s acts she imposed a patterned law; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 158<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

She made a thinking body from chemic cells<\/p>\n

And moulded a being out of a driven force.<\/p>\n

To be what she was not inflamed her hope:<\/p>\n

She turned her dream towards some high Unknown;<\/p>\n

A breath was felt below of One supreme.<\/p>\n

An opening looked up to spheres above<\/p>\n

And coloured shadows limned on mortal ground<\/p>\n

The passing figures of immortal things;<\/p>\n

A quick celestial flash could sometimes come:<\/p>\n

The illumined soul-ray fell on heart and flesh<\/p>\n

And touched with semblances of ideal light<\/p>\n

The stuff of which our earthly dreams are made.<\/p>\n

A fragile human love that could not last,<\/p>\n

Ego’s moth-wings to lift the seraph soul,<\/p>\n

Appeared, a surface glamour of brief date<\/p>\n

Extinguished by a scanty breath of Time;<\/p>\n

Joy that forgot mortality for a while<\/p>\n

Came, a rare visitor who left betimes,<\/p>\n

And made all things seem beautiful for an hour,<\/p>\n

Hopes that soon fade to drab realities<\/p>\n

And passions that crumble to ashes while they blaze<\/p>\n

Kindled the common earth with their brief flame.<\/p>\n

A creature insignificant and small<\/p>\n

Visited, uplifted by an unknown Power,<\/p>\n

Man laboured on his little patch of earth<\/p>\n

For means to last, to enjoy, to suffer and die.<\/p>\n

A spirit that perished not with the body and breath<\/p>\n

Was there like a shadow of the Unmanifest<\/p>\n

And stood behind the little personal form<\/p>\n

But claimed not yet this earthly embodiment.<\/p>\n

Assenting to Nature’s long slow-moving toil,<\/p>\n

Watching the works of his own
\nignorance,<\/p>\n

Unknown, unfelt the mighty Witness lives<\/p>\n

And nothing shows the Glory that is here.<\/p>\n

A Wisdom governing the mystic world,<\/p>\n

A Silence listening to the cry of Life, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 159<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

It sees the hurrying crowd of moments stream<\/p>\n

Towards the still greatness of a distant hour.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This huge world unintelligibly turns<\/p>\n

In the shadow of a mused Inconscience;<\/p>\n

It hides a key to inner meanings missed,<\/p>\n

It locks in our hearts a voice we cannot hear.<\/p>\n

An enigmatic labour of the
\nSpirit,<\/p>\n

An exact machine of which none knows the use,<\/p>\n

An art and ingenuity without sense,<\/p>\n

This minute elaborate orchestrated life<\/p>\n

For ever plays its motiveless symphonies.<\/p>\n

The mind learns and knows not, turning its back to truth;<\/p>\n

It studies surface laws by surface thought,<\/p>\n

Life’s steps surveys and Nature’s process sees,<\/p>\n

Not seeing for what she acts or why we live;<\/p>\n

It marks her tireless care of just device,<\/p>\n

Her patient intricacy of fine detail,<\/p>\n

The ingenious spirit’s brave inventive plan<\/p>\n

In her great futile mass of endless works,<\/p>\n

Adds purposeful figures to her purposeless sum,<\/p>\n

Its gabled storeys piles, its climbing roofs<\/p>\n

On the close-carved foundations she has laid,<\/p>\n

Imagined citadels reared in mythic air<\/p>\n

Or mounts a stair of dream to a mystic moon:<\/p>\n

Transient creations point and hit the sky:<\/p>\n

A world-conjecture’s scheme is laboured out<\/p>\n

On the dim floor of mind’s incertitude,<\/p>\n

Or painfully built a fragmentary whole.<\/p>\n

Impenetrable, a mystery recondite<\/p>\n

Is the vast plan of which we are a part;<\/p>\n

Its harmonies are discords to our view,<\/p>\n

Because we know not the great theme they serve.<\/p>\n

Inscrutable work the cosmic agencies.<\/p>\n

Only the fringe of a wide surge we see;<\/p>\n

Our instruments have not that greater light, <\/b><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 160<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Our will tunes not with the eternal Will,<\/p>\n

Our heart’s sight is too blind and passionate.<\/p>\n

Impotent to share in Nature’s mystic tact,<\/p>\n

Inapt to feel the pulse and core of things,<\/p>\n

Our reason cannot sound life’s mighty sea<\/p>\n

And only counts its waves and scans its foam;<\/p>\n

It knows not whence these motions touch and pass,<\/p>\n

It sees not whither sweeps the hurrying flood:<\/p>\n

Only it strives to canalise its powers<\/p>\n

And hopes to turn its course to human ends:<\/p>\n

But all its means come from the Inconscient’s store.<\/p>\n

Unseen here act dim huge world-energies<\/p>\n

And only trickles and currents are our share.<\/p>\n

Our mind lives far off from the authentic Light<\/p>\n

Catching at little fragments of the Truth,<\/p>\n

In a small corner of infinity,<\/p>\n

Our lives are inlets of an ocean’s force.<\/p>\n

Our conscious movements have sealed origins<\/p>\n

But with those shadowy seats no converse hold;<\/p>\n

No understanding binds our comrade parts;<\/p>\n

Our acts emerge from a crypt our minds ignore.<\/p>\n

Our deepest depths are ignorant of themselves;<\/p>\n

Even our body is a mystery shop;<\/p>\n

As our earth’s roots lurk screened below our earth,<\/p>\n

So lie unseen our roots of mind and life.<\/p>\n

Our springs are kept close hid beneath, within;<\/p>\n

Our souls are moved by powers behind the wall.<\/p>\n

In the subterranean reaches of the spirit<\/p>\n

A puissance acts and recks not what it means;<\/p>\n

Using unthinking monitors and scribes,<\/p>\n

It is the cause of what we think and feel.<\/p>\n

The troglodytes of the subconscious Mind,<\/p>\n

Ill-trained slow stammering interpreters,<\/p>\n

Only of their small task’s routine aware<\/p>\n

And busy with the record in our cells,<\/p>\n

Concealed in the subliminal secrecies <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 161<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Mid an obscure occult machinery,<\/p>\n

Capture the mystic Morse whose measured lilt<\/p>\n

Transmits the messages of the cosmic Force.<\/p>\n

A whisper falls into life’s inner ear<\/p>\n

And echoes from the dun subconscient caves,<\/p>\n

Speech leaps, thought quivers, the heart vibrates, the will<\/p>\n

Answers and tissue and nerve obey the call.<\/p>\n

Our lives translate these subtle intimacies;<\/p>\n

All is the commerce of a secret Power.<\/p>\n

A thinking puppet is the mind of life:<\/p>\n

Its choice is the work of elemental strengths<\/p>\n

That know not their own birth and end and cause<\/p>\n

And glimpse not the immense intent they serve.<\/p>\n

In this nether life of man drab-hued and dull,<\/p>\n

Yet filled with poignant small ignoble things,<\/p>\n

The conscious Doll is pushed a hundred ways<\/p>\n

And feels the push but not the hands that drive.<\/p>\n

For none can see the masked ironic troupe<\/p>\n

To whom our figure-selves are marionettes,<\/p>\n

Our deeds unwitting movements in their grasp,<\/p>\n

Our passionate strife an entertainment’s scene.<\/p>\n

Ignorant themselves of their own fount of strength<\/p>\n

They play their part in the enormous
\nWhole.<\/p>\n

Agents of darkness imitating light,<\/p>\n

Spirits obscure and moving things obscure,<\/p>\n

Unwillingly they serve a mightier Power.<\/p>\n

Ananke’s engines organising Chance,<\/p>\n

Channels perverse of a stupendous Will,<\/p>\n

Tools of the Unknown who use us as their tools,<\/p>\n

Invested with Power in Nature’s nether state,<\/p>\n

Into the actions mortals think their own<\/p>\n

They bring the incoherences of Fate,<\/p>\n

Or make a doom of Time’s slipshod caprice<\/p>\n

And toss the lives of men from hand to hand<\/p>\n

In an inconsequent and devious game.<\/p>\n

Against all higher Truth their stuff rebels; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 162<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Only to Titan force their will lies prone.<\/p>\n

Inordinate their hold on human hearts,<\/p>\n

In all our nature’s turns they intervene.<\/p>\n

Insignificant architects of low-built lives<\/p>\n

And engineers of interest and desire,<\/p>\n

Out of crude earthiness and muddy thrills<\/p>\n

And coarse reactions of material nerve<\/p>\n

They build our huddled structures of self-will<\/p>\n

And the ill-lighted mansions of our thought,<\/p>\n

Or with the ego’s factories and marts<\/p>\n

Surround the beautiful temple of the soul.<\/p>\n

Artists minute of the hues of littleness,<\/p>\n

They set the mosaic of
\nLife’s comedy<\/p>\n

Or plan the trivial tragedy of our days,<\/p>\n

Arrange the deed, combine the circumstance<\/p>\n

And the fantasia of the moods costume.<\/p>\n

These unwise prompters of man’s ignorant heart<\/p>\n

And tutors of his stumbling speech and will,<\/p>\n

Movers of petty wraths and lusts and hates<\/p>\n

And changeful thoughts and shallow emotion’s starts,<\/p>\n

These slight illusion-makers with their masks,<\/p>\n

Painters of the decor of a dull-hued stage<\/p>\n

And nimble scene-shifters of the human play,<\/p>\n

Ever are busy with this ill-lit scene.<\/p>\n

Ourselves incapable to build our fate<\/p>\n

Only as actors speak and strut our parts<\/p>\n

Until the piece is done and we pass off<\/p>\n

Into a brighter Time and subtler Space.<\/p>\n

Thus they inflict their little pigmy law<\/p>\n

And curb the mounting slow uprise of man,<\/p>\n

Then his too scanty walk with death they close.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is the ephemeral creature’s daily life.<\/p>\n

As long as the human animal is lord<\/p>\n

And a dense nether nature screens the soul,<\/p>\n

As long as intellect’s outward-gazing sight <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 163<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Serves earthy interest and creature joys,<\/p>\n

An incurable littleness pursues his days.<\/p>\n

Ever since consciousness was born on earth,<\/p>\n

Life is the same in insect, ape and man,<\/p>\n

Its stuff unchanged, its way the common route.<\/p>\n

If new designs, if richer details grow<\/p>\n

And thought is added and more tangled cares,<\/p>\n

If little by little it wears a brighter face,<\/p>\n

Still even in man the plot is mean and poor.<\/p>\n

A gross content prolongs his fallen state;<\/p>\n

His small successes are failures of the soul,<\/p>\n

His little pleasures punctuate frequent griefs:<\/p>\n

Hardship and toil are the heavy price he pays<\/p>\n

For the right to live and his last wages death.<\/p>\n

An inertia sunk towards inconscience,<\/p>\n

A sleep that imitates death is his repose.<\/p>\n

A puny splendour of creative force<\/p>\n

Is made his spur to fragile human works<\/p>\n

Which yet outlast their brief creator’s breath.<\/p>\n

He dreams sometimes of the revels of the gods<\/p>\n

And sees the Dionysian gesture pass,\u2014<\/p>\n

A leonine greatness that would tear his soul<\/p>\n

If through his failing limbs and fainting heart<\/p>\n

The sweet and joyful mighty madness swept:<\/p>\n

Trivial amusements stimulate and waste<\/p>\n

The energy given to him to grow and be.<\/p>\n

His little hour is spent in little things.<\/p>\n

A brief companionship with many jars,<\/p>\n

A little love and jealousy and hate,<\/p>\n

A touch of friendship mid indifferent crowds<\/p>\n

Draw his heart-plan on life’s diminutive map.<\/p>\n

If something great awakes, too frail his pitch<\/p>\n

To reveal its zenith tension of delight,<\/p>\n

His thought to eternise its ephemeral soar,<\/p>\n

Art’s brilliant gleam is a pastime for his eyes,<\/p>\n

A thrill that smites the nerves is music’s spell. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 164<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Amidst his harassed toil and welter of cares,<\/p>\n

Pressed by the labour of his crowding thoughts,<\/p>\n

He draws sometimes around his aching brow<\/p>\n

Nature’s calm mighty hands to heal his life-pain.<\/p>\n

He is saved by her silence from his rack of self;<\/p>\n

In her tranquil beauty is his purest bliss.<\/p>\n

A new life dawns, he looks out from vistas wide;<\/p>\n

The Spirit’s breath moves him but soon retires:<\/p>\n

His strength was not made to hold that puissant guest.<\/p>\n

All dulls down to convention and routine<\/p>\n

Or a fierce excitement brings him vivid joys:<\/p>\n

His days are tinged with the red hue of strife<\/p>\n

And lust’s hot glare and passion’s crimson stain;<\/p>\n

Battle and murder are his tribal game.<\/p>\n

Time has he none to turn his eyes within<\/p>\n

And look for his lost self and his dead soul.<\/p>\n

His motion on too short an axis wheels;<\/p>\n

He cannot soar but creeps on his long road<\/p>\n

Or if, impatient of the trudge of Time,<\/p>\n

He would make a splendid haste on Fate’s slow road,<\/p>\n

His heart that runs soon pants and tires and sinks;<\/p>\n

Or he walks ever on and finds no end.<\/p>\n

Hardly a few can climb to greater life.<\/p>\n

All tunes to a low scale and conscious pitch.<\/p>\n

His knowledge dwells in the house of Ignorance;<\/p>\n

His force nears not even once the Omnipotent,<\/p>\n

Rare are his visits of heavenly ecstasy.<\/p>\n

The bliss which sleeps in things and tries to wake,<\/p>\n

Breaks out in him in a small joy of life:<\/p>\n

This scanty grace is his persistent stay;<\/p>\n

It lightens the burden of his many ills<\/p>\n

And reconciles him to his little world.<\/p>\n

He is satisfied with his common average kind;<\/p>\n

Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought,<\/p>\n

His old familiar interests and desires<\/p>\n

He has made a thick and narrowing hedge <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 165<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Defending his small life from the Invisible;<\/p>\n

His being’s kinship to infinity<\/p>\n

He has shut away from him into inmost self,<\/p>\n

Fenced off the greatnesses of hidden God.<\/p>\n

His being was formed to play a trivial part<\/p>\n

In a little drama on a petty stage;<\/p>\n

In a narrow plot he has pitched his tent of life<\/p>\n

Beneath the wide gaze of the starry Vast.<\/p>\n

He is the crown of all that has been done:<\/p>\n

Thus is creation’s labour justified;<\/p>\n

This is the world’s result, Nature’s last poise!<\/p>\n

And if this were all and nothing more were meant,<\/p>\n

If what now seems were the whole of what must be,<\/p>\n

If this were not a stade through which we pass<\/p>\n

On our road from Matter to eternal Self,<\/p>\n

To the Light that made the worlds, the Cause of things,<\/p>\n

Well might interpret our mind’s limited view<\/p>\n

Existence as an accident in Time,<\/p>\n

Illusion or phenomenon or freak,<\/p>\n

The paradox of a creative Thought<\/p>\n

Which moves between unreal opposites,<\/p>\n

Inanimate Force struggling to feel and know,<\/p>\n

Matter that chanced to read itself by Mind,<\/p>\n

Inconscience monstrously engendering soul.<\/p>\n

At times all looks unreal and remote:<\/p>\n

We seem to live in a fiction of our thoughts<\/p>\n

Pieced from sensation’s fanciful traveller’s tale,<\/p>\n

Or caught on the film of the recording brain,<\/p>\n

A figment or circumstance in cosmic sleep.<\/p>\n

A somnambulist walking under the moon,<\/p>\n

An image of ego treads through an ignorant dream<\/p>\n

Counting the moments of a spectral Time.<\/p>\n

In a false perspective of effect and cause,<\/p>\n

Trusting to a specious prospect of world-space,<\/p>\n

It drifts incessantly from scene to scene,<\/p>\n

Whither it knows not, to what fabulous verge. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 166<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

All here is dreamed or doubtfully exists,<\/p>\n

But who the dreamer is and whence he looks<\/p>\n

Is still unknown or only a shadowy guess.<\/p>\n

Or the world is real but ourselves too small,<\/p>\n

Insufficient for the mightiness of our stage.<\/p>\n

A thin life-curve crosses the titan whirl<\/p>\n

Of the orbit of a soulless universe,<\/p>\n

And in the belly of the sparse rolling mass<\/p>\n

A mind looks out from a small casual globe<\/p>\n

And wonders what itself and all things are.<\/p>\n

And yet to some interned subjective sight<\/p>\n

That strangely has formed in Matter’s sightless stuff,<\/p>\n

A pointillage minute of little self<\/p>\n

Takes figure as world-being’s conscious base.<\/p>\n

Such is our scene in the half-light below.<\/p>\n

This is the sign of Matter’s infinite,<\/p>\n

This the weird purport of the picture shown<\/p>\n

To Science the giantess, measurer of her field,<\/p>\n

As she pores on the record of her close survey<\/p>\n

And mathematises her huge external world,<\/p>\n

To Reason bound within the circle of sense,<\/p>\n

Or in Thought’s broad impalpable Exchange<\/p>\n

A speculator in tenuous vast ideas,<\/p>\n

Abstractions in the void her currency<\/p>\n

We know not with what firm values for its base.<\/p>\n

Only religion in this bankruptcy<\/p>\n

Presents its dubious riches to our hearts<\/p>\n

Or signs unprovisioned cheques on the Beyond:<\/p>\n

Our poverty shall there have its revenge.<\/p>\n

Our spirits depart discarding a futile life<\/p>\n

Into the black unknown or with them take<\/p>\n

Death’s passport into immortality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet was this only a provisional scheme,<\/p>\n

A false appearance sketched by limiting sense,<\/p>\n

Mind’s insufficient self-discovery, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 167<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

An early attempt, a first experiment.<\/p>\n

This was a toy to amuse the infant earth;<\/p>\n

But knowledge ends not in these surface powers<\/p>\n

That live upon a ledge in the Ignorance<\/p>\n

And dare not look into the dangerous depths<\/p>\n

Or to stare upward measuring the Unknown.<\/p>\n

There is a deeper seeing from within<\/p>\n

And, when we have left these small purlieus of mind,<\/p>\n

A greater vision meets us on the heights<\/p>\n

In the luminous wideness of the
\nSpirit’s gaze.<\/p>\n

At last there wakes in us a witness Soul<\/p>\n

That looks at truths unseen and scans the Unknown;<\/p>\n

Then all assumes a
\nnew and marvellous face.<\/p>\n

The world quivers with a God-light at its core,<\/p>\n

In Time’s deep heart high purposes move and live,<\/p>\n

Life’s borders crumble and join infinity.<\/p>\n

This broad, confused, yet rigid scheme becomes<\/p>\n

A magnificent imbroglio of the Gods,<\/p>\n

A game, a work ambiguously divine.<\/p>\n

Our seekings are short-lived experiments<\/p>\n

Made by a wordless and inscrutable Power<\/p>\n

Testing its issues from inconscient Night<\/p>\n

To meet its luminous self of Truth and Bliss.<\/p>\n

It peers at the Real through the apparent form;<\/p>\n

It labours in our mortal mind and sense;<\/p>\n

Amid the figures of the Ignorance,<\/p>\n

In the symbol pictures drawn by word and thought,<\/p>\n

It seeks the truth to which all figures point;<\/p>\n

It looks for the source of Light with vision’s lamp;<\/p>\n

It works to find the
\ndoer of all works,<\/p>\n

The unfelt Self within who is the guide,<\/p>\n

The unknown Self above who is the goal.<\/p>\n

All is not here a blinded Nature’s task:<\/p>\n

A Word, a Wisdom watches us from on high,<\/p>\n

A Witness sanctioning her will and works,<\/p>\n

An Eye unseen in the unseeing vast; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 168<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

There is an Influence from a Light above,<\/p>\n

There are thoughts
\nremote and sealed eternities:<\/p>\n

A mystic motive drives the stars and suns.<\/p>\n

In this passage from a deaf unknowing Force<\/p>\n

To struggling consciousness and transient breath<\/p>\n

A mighty supernature waits on Time.<\/p>\n

The world is other than we now think and see,<\/p>\n

Our lives a deeper mystery than we have dreamed;<\/p>\n

Our minds are starters in the race to God,<\/p>\n

Our souls deputed selves of the Supreme.<\/p>\n

Across the cosmic field through narrow lanes<\/p>\n

Asking a scanty dole from Fortune’s hands<\/p>\n

And garbed in beggar’s robes there walks the One.<\/p>\n

Even in the theatre of these small lives<\/p>\n

Behind the act a secret sweetness breathes,<\/p>\n

An urge of miniature divinity.<\/p>\n

A mystic passion from the wells of God<\/p>\n

Flows through the guarded spaces of the soul;<\/p>\n

A force that helps, supports the suffering earth,<\/p>\n

An unseen nearness and a hidden joy.<\/p>\n

There are muffled throbs of laughter’s undertones,<\/p>\n

The murmur of an occult happiness,<\/p>\n

An exultation in the depths of sleep,<\/p>\n

A heart of bliss within a world of pain.<\/p>\n

An Infant nursed on Nature’s covert breast,<\/p>\n

An Infant playing in the magic woods,<\/p>\n

Fluting to rapture by the
\nSpirit’s streams,<\/p>\n

Awaits the hour when we shall turn to his call.<\/p>\n

In this investiture of fleshly life<\/p>\n

A soul that is a spark of God survives<\/p>\n

And sometimes it breaks through the sordid screen<\/p>\n

And kindles a fire that makes us half-divine.<\/p>\n

In our body’s cells there sits a hidden Power<\/p>\n

That sees the unseen and plans eternity,<\/p>\n

Our smallest parts have room for deepest needs;<\/p>\n

There too the golden Messengers can come: <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 169<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A door is cut in the mud wall of self;<\/p>\n

Across the lowly threshold with bowed heads<\/p>\n

Angels of ecstasy and self-giving pass,<\/p>\n

And lodged in an inner sanctuary of dream<\/p>\n

The makers of the image of deity live.<\/p>\n

Pity is there and fire-winged sacrifice,<\/p>\n

And flashes of sympathy and tenderness<\/p>\n

Cast heaven-lights from the heart’s secluded shrine.<\/p>\n

A work is done in the deep silences;<\/p>\n

A glory and wonder of spiritual sense,<\/p>\n

A laughter in beauty’s everlasting space<\/p>\n

Transforming world-experience into joy,<\/p>\n

Inhabit the mystery of the untouched gulfs;<\/p>\n

Lulled by Time’s beats eternity sleeps in us.<\/p>\n

In the sealed hermetic heart, the happy core,<\/p>\n

Unmoved behind this outer shape of death<\/p>\n

The eternal Entity prepares within<\/p>\n

Its matter of divine felicity,<\/p>\n

Its reign of heavenly phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Even in our sceptic mind of ignorance<\/p>\n

A foresight comes of some immense release,<\/p>\n

Our will lifts towards it slow and shaping hands.<\/p>\n

Each part in us
\ndesires its absolute:<\/p>\n

Our thoughts cover the everlasting Light,<\/p>\n

Our strength derives from an omnipotent Force,<\/p>\n

And since from a veiled God-joy the worlds were made<\/p>\n

And since eternal beauty asks for form<\/p>\n

Even here where all is made of being’s dust,<\/p>\n

Our hearts are captured by ensnaring shapes,<\/p>\n

Our very senses blindly seek for bliss.<\/p>\n

Our error crucifies Reality<\/p>\n

To force its birth and divine body here,<\/p>\n

Compelling, incarnate in a human form<\/p>\n

And breathing in limbs that one can touch and clasp,<\/p>\n

Its knowledge to rescue ancient Ignorance,<\/p>\n

Its saviour light the inconscient universe. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 170<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

And when that greater Self comes sea-like down<\/p>\n

To fill this image of our transience,<\/p>\n

All shall be captured by delight, transformed:<\/p>\n

In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll<\/p>\n

Our mind and life and sense and laugh in a light<\/p>\n

Other than this hard limited human day,<\/p>\n

The body’s tissues thrill apotheosised,<\/p>\n

Its cells sustain bright metamorphosis.<\/p>\n

This little being of Time, this shadow-soul,<\/p>\n

This living dwarf-figure-head of darkened spirit<\/p>\n

Out of its traffic of petty dreams shall rise.<\/p>\n

Its shape of person and its ego face<\/p>\n

Divested of this mortal travesty,<\/p>\n

Like a clay troll kneaded into a god<\/p>\n

New-made in the image of the eternal Guest,<\/p>\n

It shall be caught to the breast of a white Force<\/p>\n

And, flaming with the paradisal touch<\/p>\n

In a rose-fire of sweet spiritual grace,<\/p>\n

In the red passion of its infinite change,<\/p>\n

Quiver, awake, and shudder with ecstasy.<\/p>\n

As if reversing a deformation’s spell,<\/p>\n

Released from the black magic of the Night,<\/p>\n

Renouncing servitude to the dark Abyss,<\/p>\n

It shall learn at
\nlast who lived within unseen<\/p>\n

And seized with marvel in the adoring heart<\/p>\n

To the enthroned Child-Godhead kneel aware,<\/p>\n

Trembling with beauty and delight and love.<\/p>\n

But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve<\/p>\n

Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.<\/p>\n

The soul must soar sovereign above the form<\/p>\n

And climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep;<\/p>\n

Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength,<\/p>\n

Surprise the animal with the occult god.<\/p>\n

Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,<\/p>\n

Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,<\/p>\n

We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 171<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Make the abysm a road for Heaven’s descent,<\/p>\n

Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray<\/p>\n

And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Adventuring once more in the natal mist<\/p>\n

Across the dangerous haze, the pregnant stir,<\/p>\n

He through the astral chaos shore a way<\/p>\n

Mid the grey faces of its demon gods,<\/p>\n

Questioned by whispers of its flickering ghosts,<\/p>\n

Besieged by sorceries of its fluent force.<\/p>\n

As one who walks unguided through strange fields<\/p>\n

Tending he knows not where nor with what hope,<\/p>\n

He trod a soil that failed beneath his feet<\/p>\n

And journeyed in stone strength to a fugitive end.<\/p>\n

His trail behind him was a vanishing line<\/p>\n

Of glimmering points in a vague immensity;<\/p>\n

A bodiless murmur travelled at his side<\/p>\n

In the wounded gloom complaining against light.<\/p>\n

A huge obstruction its immobile heart,<\/p>\n

The watching opacity multiplied as he moved<\/p>\n

Its hostile mass of dead and staring eyes;<\/p>\n

The darkness glimmered like a dying torch.<\/p>\n

Around him an extinguished phantom glow<\/p>\n

Peopled with shadowy and misleading shapes<\/p>\n

The vague Inconscient’s dark and measureless cave.<\/p>\n

His only sunlight was his spirit’s flame. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Five <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 172<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Canto Five    The Godheads of the Little Life    A fixed and narrow power with rigid forms, He saw the empire of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-28-savitri-volume-28","wpcat-10-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}